We might wonder here if the word commend isn’t a mistake for command or recommend. But in the Oxford English Dictionary, there is evidence that the verb commend (under definition 2d) had the meaning ‘to recommend (a person) to do a thing’, with the following citation from Early Modern English (original spelling retained):
In other words, there is no need here in Ether 12:41 to emend commend to recommend since commend earlier had ‘recommend’ as one of its meanings (this meaning is marked as obsolete in the OED). It is also unlikely here in Ether 12:41 that the original text read command rather than commend; elsewhere in the history of the text, there are no examples where command and commend have ever been mixed up, even momentarily in the manuscripts.
There is another instance of commend in the Book of Mormon text that has an archaic meaning; in this case the meaning is ‘entrust’:
This meaning is listed in the OED under definition 1b for commend. The King James Bible has a number of cases where commend has this meaning (as in Acts 20:32: “I commend you to God”).
Summary: Maintain both instances of commend in the Book of Mormon, in Ether 6:4 and Ether 12:41; in each case, the assigned meaning is either obsolete or no longer common.